'Green' burial options grow

On the crest of a hill in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery off Lake Avenue, several grand oak trees provide cover for a shady expanse where wildflowers and native grasses grow long in the summer.

It doesn't look like a traditional burial ground, and it isn't.

Holy Sepulchre and Ascension Garden, on Pinnacle Road in Henrietta, are the first Catholic cemeteries in the state to receive natural burial certification from the Green Burial Council and only the second and third certified natural burial grounds in the Rochester area.

Like other sorts of "natural" or "green" practices, the aim in these burials is to reduce the carbon footprint and conform more closely to nature.

When it comes to interment, that means no cement vault, no elaborate coffin, no toxic embalming fluids and no prominent grave marker, among other things.

James Weisbeck explains the concept behind a natural burial.
Video by Justin Murphy

The burials cost somewhat less than traditional ones because there are fewer items to buy. Many people are buried in a simple shroud or pine box; at Ascension Garden, the plain, flat grave markers come from stone displaced by local farmers.

"It's really not new," said James Weisbeck, general manager of the two cemeteries. "People were always buried very simply prior to the beginning of the modern funeral system."

That system began during the Civil War, when funeral directors developed advanced embalming techniques to transport war casualties back home for funerals many days later.

Those embalming practices have become commonplace. Vaults for graves are usually required to prevent the ground from settling, making the grass difficult to mow. Green burials eschew both practices in favor of a less disruptive approach.

Natural burial plots are only mowed once or twice a year. Visitors don't usually stand directly at the marker, as in traditional cemeteries, but rather on the periphery of the protected grassland. The effect is similar to a nature preserve.

"You kind of enjoy the space without actually walking through it," said Andrea Vittum, president of White Haven Memorial Park in Pittsford, the other local cemetery with a green burial certification. "It's really not the idea that you need to stand right on the grave. The idea is that you're part of nature and you want to observe nature without interfering with it."

Other cemeteries across the state are offering more green burial options, but only one besides the three in Monroe County has gone through the process to earn "natural burial grounds" certification from the Green Burial Council. Mount Hope Cemetery has achieved a lesser designation by not requiring vaults in some areas.

The first person was buried in Holy Sepulchre's green area this spring and several other plots have been sold, Weisbeck said. White Haven has sold about 150 plots and buried about 20 people in its green section, which opened in 2010, Vittum said.

Weisbeck and Vittum both predicted the ecological appeal and the lower cost would draw more interest as the idea becomes better known.

"It's a healthy way to be," Vittum said. "And some people say cemeteries are just a waste of space. But when you preserve a beautiful area like this meadow and all the wildlife it sustains, it's difficult to call it a waste of space. It's a wonderful green space in an otherwise concrete world."